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I'm thinking of buying a few Thousand Sons, and Ahriman for conversion in finecast, but i've heard its pretty bad.

Is it worth the money?

Nope. I tried some Failcast and now I only buy metal/plastic. If you need a mini that is now only Failcast, get them in metal off ebay. Cheaper, higher quality, won't needs repairs and resculpting out the ying-yang and strips easily.

If you get past all the people whining, and have some access to Liquid Green Stuff, you'll be fine. An occasional bubble can be filled with the LGS no problem, anything more blaring, and you can call GW. They'll just send you a new one that they've checked. (Viola, two models. Just don't abuse the system.)

I've never really gotten models that couldn't be fixed with some liquid GS and a little bit of xacto knife shaving.

^ And that's the problem with Failcast. The response about the casts nearly always being poor quality is, "Well you can fix it yourself after you buy it." Or my favorite, "Well buy another of GW's products to fix their other product."

But hey, if you don't minf buying poor quality minis, then pay for extra prodcts to spend your time on attempting to fix said poor quality mini, rock out!

Um. Every product in our hobby requires maintenance. So finecast requires a bit more.

"Wahhh"?

It's not a big deal, and frankly the models look great.

Maintenance is upkeep. Not repair of something new. And I've never had any plastic/metal minis come half as bad as the Failcast I've purchased. Out of hundreds of minis. Plus the plastic/metal is cheaper.

The major problems Failcast I purchased had, aside from bubbles and warped parts;
Missing bits

Entire areas bubbled so bad they couldn't be filled and needed full re-sculpting

Rippled surfaces, unfixable short of sanding the entire surface down and then building it back up with GS.

Extremely fragile and often have internal air bubbles you don't notice until a part snaps off.

GW did send me replacements, but the replacements were poor quality as well. Reminds me of that GD painter who went through 10 replacements of a Necron Failcast model trying to get a decent copy which he documented on his blog.

Check it in-store then, if your luck is like that.

You know a product is high quality when you should check it in store to make sure it's not a dud!

I have never had any issues with Finecast. In fact I prefer it the old horrid metal minis.

Not that I disagree with you, but for once can we at least try and create a finecast thread that isn't a pulsing bubble of rage?

 60mm wrote:
You know a product is high quality when you should check it in store to make sure it's not a dud!

...Too bad?

I think if such a thing was created, it would probably be taken as sarcastic in the extreme and Moderated for trolling. ^^;

Finecast-hate is overstated. At this point, miscasts seem to be far less common than they were at launch (but that could just be from my experience). My only real beefs with it are the exorbitant costs, thin pieces can get bent out of shape easily and that I just plain prefer the heft of metal minis, but I'm definitely not sworn off of Finecast by any stretch of the imagination. In fact, some minis are better now than they were in metal (eg, Zoanthropes, Canis, etc).

Most finecast models are perfectly fine. They don't have any flaws or such.

The worst you will find is the occasional bubble, which is really no big deal.


However, Finecast as a material is a poor one. It has almost no tolerence for heat or stress. Any sort of pressure on the model when its being heated(even at a realtivly low temp) will cause it to warp.

Its too soft as a material for some of the finer detals that GW has on their models.

But Plague Marines don't have many fiddly parts so you should be fine, except for the champion's sword.


I prefer metal models for weight reasons, although assembly can be a royal pain.

 Phosis T'Kar Jr wrote:
I'm thinking of buying a few Thousand Sons, and Ahriman for conversion in finecast, but i've heard its pretty bad.

Is it worth the money?

Anyone who says no is more than likely going to be from outside of the UK. I've bought finecast from when it was initially released to some of the latest releases, the Blood Angels HQ choices being the latest I've bought, and I've been massively impressed with them.

There's a bloke I game against who refuses to buy finecast until he saw the ones I had, and he's willing to change his mind that GW have finally gotten on the road to fixing it.

The customers in the US/Canada/Australia unfortunately seem to have all the fine cast that messed up in the UK

it depends how you feel about it. I dislike the fact that I have to buy a product to fix their mistakes but anyway.

yes, you should buy them and get them replaced if needs be as bitching wont solve anything however if you can find metal for cheaper then always go for that (unless your one of "those" people who has never heard of a pin drill and constantly complains about metals falling appart)

 Grey Templar wrote:


However, Finecast as a material is a poor one. It has almost no tolerence for heat or stress.

This is true, the one decent sunny day my Venomthrope wilted in the sun. Thankfully we don't get too many sunny days over here

Finecast was to GW what Vista was to Windows.


It was released before it was completely ready. GW really shouldn't have suddenly released it like they did.

Although Finecast is fixed now, so there are now an acceptable number of casting flaws(originally they were bad) for the process.


However, it doesn't change the fact the material is not a good one. They should have gone to real resin, or just swapped everything over to their plastics(which are amazing)

Finecast is low quality, but there ain't much good alternatives. People tend to glorify how good the old metals were, and they forget how much of a pain moldlines were to remove and also how fething difficult it was to convert or even glue a lot of the minis. Remember the 'Abaddon has no arms' thing?

I've only bought five or six finecast pieces, and they've all been fine except for one tiny bubble. I only prefer metal because I like the weight. But to answer your question, I'd say give it a chance, it's not as bad as its made out to be, in my experience.

 LoneLictor wrote:
Finecast is low quality, but there ain't much good alternatives. People tend to glorify how good the old metals were, and they forget how much of a pain moldlines were to remove and also how fething difficult it was to convert or even glue a lot of the minis. Remember the 'Abaddon has no arms' thing?

yeah, metal had its fair share of problems too.

But you could easily fix that with plastic.

Personally, I try to avoid Finecast if possible. I will buy metal over finecast, but I wish they'd just go with the standard plastic they use for most models. It's a happy medium, and works great for kit bashing and repairs.

Having bought Eldar and Tyranid finecast, I dislike the material compared to metal. I had to get a replacement for a Zoanthrope that came with two of the same arms and bubbles far beyond my ability to fix. I think there are a few pics in my gallery if anyone want a look. The replacement I got was so fragile I came home from school one day to find the zoanthrope had flopped over because of the weight of it's head and a weak tail.
I have finecast Striking Scorpions and Dark Reapers, bought at different times and the quality difference really shows. The scorpions were covered in bubbles and the weapons were mostly warped and some of the hilts snapped during assembly (I wasn't forcing it at all, trust me.). The Dark Reapers which were bought a few months later were improved, but still had bubbles and the exarch's weapon is bent but for me, that is what I expect from finecast.
I avoid finecast and only get the stuff if I have to. Give me metal any day, mainly because I don't have to do as much work to make the models look well.

I agree that finecast as a whole is a failure, and that GW either should have gone with a Forge World quality resin, or just switched entirely to plastic (if the DV models and the Aspiring Champion model are any indication, they may just end up doing that), but the material isn't half as bad as people make them out to be, that is assuming you either have AC or a good dark place to store them.

Whilst I can't claim to hate finecast, I've only bought one model in it and that was a techmarine whose axe and servo harness I wanted to use to make a Master of the Forge on bike. Unfortunately the back of the axe was damaged by a gas bubble, so GW are sending me a replacement.

They do have great customer service, but I don't think much of the material.

The only metal model I can recall being bad in 15 years was the original Emperor's Champion model, where they managed to misalign the mould resulting in an unfortunate mould line.

RegalPhantom wrote:
(if the DV models and the Aspiring Champion model are any indication, they may just end up doing that)

Quality was never the restricting factor of going all plastic, price was, and still is. When it comes to things like non-generic characters or units you're not likely to take multiples of, plastic just isn't cost effective. It's best for kits that are going to sell a lot, thus use the mold a lot to recover the large tooling costs. The only reason there's any plastic special characters on the shelf at all are because they're options in a larger kit - like the Griffon kit, and the Hive Tyrant kit.

Until they start letting you take squads of Kharn or Lemartes, we'll never see all plastic.

I have only bought 1 Finecast figure, that of Nemesor Zahndrek, and the only reason I did was there was no warping or bubbles whatsoever. Fortunantly, as a Necron player, I can make all of what I need out of plastic....Overlords and Named Lords from the foot Overlord in the A-Barge kit, Crypteks and Minor Lords from the Lychguard and Immortal kits.

I've bought plenty of Finecast and I haven't had a problem.

Marneus Calgar + Honor Guard - perfect

25th Anniversary Model - perfect

Cassius - Perfect

Emperor's Champion - Perfect

Frankly, I've had more trouble with GW pewter models than I've ever had with Finecast. I had to spend an entire night grinding down an army of Telion so that his hand would fit properly with the bolter. /sigh.

The fact that any thread on FC gets a pretty split response between it being good and bad is pretty telling. My personal opinion and experience aside, when such a significant chunk of your customers think a certain product is bad . . . it is a real issue.

FC supporters often say that people who don't like FC are just whiners, but if that is true, why are there no complaints about plastic? Given the fact that far more plastic is moved than FC, you'd think that there would be far more people complaining about plastic. Yet there aren't, because the plastic quality is good, hence you don't really here complaints.

FC has definitely earned it's reputation. While polarization can be great in terms of design, when you have your customer base polarized on QC issues it is never a good thing.

I think that finecast has really improved from its initial release. I've only seen 2 models at my FLGS have problems. One was a Castellan Crowe model I bought and promptly was replaced by GW for free. The other was a Dark Eldar Succubus? I think that's the term and her face was totally fethed up. She was sent back by the store owner.